“Who needs an app store?” Five years of iPhone

The iPhone has evolved—and altered the course of the smartphone industry.

It has officially been half a decade since the original iPhone was introduced on June 29, 2007. Not long. But technology years have become more and more like dog years—five human years is simply not a modest amount of time for a product like the iPhone to be on the market; it has become an eternity.

So it can be hard to remember that the iPhone's launch in 2007 permanently changed the smartphone. It left (and is currently leaving) its mark on the handset scene altogether; it kicked into gear a burgeoning mobile app industry that would be hard to live without today. And Apple now seems perpetually embroiled in countless patent suits with its competitors over what former Apple CEO Steve Jobs described as "a great theft" of Apple's designs.

The tech world has changed so much in those five years since 2007, yet Apple has largely stayed true to its original product vision. On this five-year anniversary of the iPhone's launch, let's take a look back at how the iPhone has evolved, as well as the evolution of the operating system that comes with it.

Original iPhone and iPhone OS 1.0: "We love the concept..."

It's clear to us that the iPhone wasn't meant, at the outset anyway, as a smartphone for smartphone people (who typically end up being business people). Instead, the iPhone was meant as a smartphone for everyone else: average people who, until now, had no reason or motivation to get a BlackBerry or something similar that may have been more difficult to use and had way too many features for the average phone user.
—Jacqui Cheng, Ars review, July 9, 2007

The original iPhone was a controversial device. The geek crowd was still emotionally attached to the late-1990s idea that Apple was on the verge of death. It was suspicious that Apple would create something that was more than a niche product that would only appeal to a tiny percentage of "Mac zealots." Companies like Nokia openly voiced skepticism that Apple could just jump into the handset market feet-first and be successful. Apple fans were more than excited, but it seemed that the world at large approached the idea of the iPhone with extreme caution.

But the company moved forward, and on June 29, 2007, it released its first foray into cellular mobile devices. The iPhone had a glossy glass screen and a matte metal back. It only worked on AT&T and was not subsidized. Users had to pay full price for the iPhone right from the beginning and still had to commit to a two-year contract. It worked on AT&T's EDGE network, as 3G was just becoming popular. Though a number of other phones already supported it, 3G networks (and corresponding devices) weren't quite at the same level of ubiquity as they are today. (For reference, T-Mobile had not even begun to roll out its 3G network yet).

The mobile landscape at the time looked something like this:

What was available to us at the time when we reviewed the original iPhone in 2007.

But Apple approached the concept of a smartphone a bit differently—so differently, in fact, that there was much debate about whether the iPhone even qualified as a "smartphone." Unlike most smartphones, the iPhone had only one button and no hardware keyboard. Its enterprise features were lacking—there was no Exchange support, and IT admins were extremely limited in their control over the device for business users. But Apple also made it easier for consumers to sync the iPhone with their computer in order to sync their music, e-mail accounts, photos, contacts, and more.

Evolution of the iPhone

June 2007: Original iPhone and iPhone OS 1.0 debuts, touting a full-featured Web browser. No hardware keyboard and no third-party native apps.

October 2011: iPhone 4S and iOS 5.0 are part of the first launch under Tim Cook. Siri is introduced in beta, revamped notifications come to iOS.

October 2012 (?): "The new iPhone" (along with iOS 6) is rumored for the fall with any number of potential features.

One of the main features of the iPhone was its full-featured browser. The thing could actually visit normal webpages like those displayed on computers. This was practically unheard of—most handsets at the time largely made use of awkward mobile browsers that could only load awkward mobile websites, which themselves were rare. This was a major move on Apple's part.

And if you had to reformat your device, you could restore it completely from backup from your own computer. Outside of enterprise users (who mostly had BlackBerry devices), regular consumers weren't used to this kind of feature on their phones. (I was pretty happy to be able to successfully transfer a single MP3 to my RAZR over Bluetooth back then. And it was extremely common for friends to completely lose their entire contact lists on a regular basis. Remember those times when you'd text a friend and they'd respond, "Who is this? My contacts got deleted.")

But one thing that upset developers and consumers alike was that Apple wouldn't allow third parties to develop native applications for the device, which ran what was referred to as iPhone OS (version 1.0). Apple announced just before the iPhone's release that developers would be able to create capable Web apps using new Web technologies, so there was no need to create native applications. The developer world was not pleased with this news, but they went with it because...well, what other option was there? Apple later realized that this was a mistake, and would eventually change course on that decision.

iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 2.0: "Hitting the 3G-spot"

An original iPhone next to an iPhone 3G

The clamor leading up to the introduction of the iPhone 3G was palpable. People had whipped themselves into a froth over the idea that the iPhone could finally gain 3G capabilities and see wireless data speeds so fast, their entire lives would be changed. Perhaps that expectation was a bit on the hyperbolic side, but the iPhone 3G's arrival brought the phone more in line with its higher-end competition. Customers were excited.

When Apple released the iPhone 3G, it also redesigned the phone. The back became a rounded, easily scratchable black plastic. The camera was mostly the same (save for a slightly larger lens and it being ever-so-slightly recessed), but hey, at least the speakers became better (and louder). Apple also added GPS capabilities to the iPhone for the first time.

More importantly, just months before the release of the iPhone 3G, Apple had given in to developers and announced a real iPhone SDK for producing native apps. (Ars exclusively reported in late 2007 that Apple still had no plans to release such a thing. This was later confirmed in 2011 by Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, which said Jobs was adamantly against third-party apps until there was so much internal and external pressure that the company could no longer resist). The introduction of the App Store was a major step forward for both the iPhone itself and its platform—then, iPhone OS 2.0. The App Store made its formal debut alongside the launch of the iPhone 3G.

Mobile apps, on their most basic level, were not new at this point. But you would think they were, given how explosive the market became in a short period of time after the App Store's initial launch. Smartphone users weren't used to being able to go to a centralized "store" to find and download apps for their devices from a huge variety of companies. (Up until this point, smartphone manufacturers largely treated their platforms like computers, where users would have to locate and install third-party software on their own. And that software was rarely good—developers almost never had guidelines or high-quality SDKs to work with). Developers instantly recognized the value in offering native iPhone apps through the App Store even if they also offered mobile Web apps. Over time, the concept behind the App Store eventually made its way over to a plethora of other platforms.

119 Reader Comments

A couple of major inaccuracies in the article. First, the iPhone 3G and original iPhone shared the same camera. The iPhone 3GS received the first camera upgrade.

Also, "iPhone OS" was known as such until 4.0. That's when Apple changed the name from iPhone OS to iOS. Not 3.0 as the article states.

Editor Moonshark says:

The camera was slightly different (the lens got bigger and it became recessed). We shouldn't have said it was a "better" camera though, so you are right on that, and we have tweaked the wording to reflect this.

You are incorrect about the switch from "iPhone OS" to "iOS" however, it was iOS 3.0 when released. (Citation)

Honestly I sometimes think the geeks at large missed a great opportunity at the release of the first iPhone...

It's true SJ didn't want to release the SDK, but there was a clear wish for devs to look upon free web technologies to build WebApps. The same way Palm tried to push them forward with PalmOS, Apple mobile devices could have been a wake up call for better web standards, that evolved faster.

5 Years later the best web browsers are based on Webkit (thanks Apple again), but the HTML5 spec still isn't finished (will it ever be?).

Research in Motion said its first quarter would be bad. It turned out to be worse. And RIM will struggle more because the company said its BlackBerry 10 platform will slip into the first quarter of 2013.

Apple announced just before the iPhone's release that developers would be able to create capable Web apps using new Web technologies, so there was no need to create native applications. The developer world was not pleased with this news, but they went with it because...well, what other option was there?

Actually, I think the developer world simply ignored web apps altogether and hacked their iPhones to run things like ScummVM.

A couple of major inaccuracies in the article. First, the iPhone 3G and original iPhone shared the same camera. The iPhone 3GS received the first camera upgrade.

The reason I said the camera was different was because it was VERY slightly different (the lens got bigger and it became recessed). I shouldn't have said it was a "better" camera though, so you are right on that, and I have tweaked the wording to reflect this.

CUPERTINO, California—April 24, 2012—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 second quarter which ended March 31, 2012. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones during the quarter, a 88 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

The following March, Apple had to hold a press conference in Cupertino wherein Jobs demonstrated the same phenomenon on phones from other manufacturers. He promised free iPhone cases to affected iPhone 4 users in order to prevent them from bridging the antenna with their hands.

That aside, I waited in line 8+ hours in a shopping mall for the first iPhone in 2007, I finally walked out of the Apple store at 6:45PM with my phone. At the time, my friends wondered why I didn't have a smartphone - and my answer was always that they sucked and I wouldn't pay an extra $30/mo for email on the go and a crappy WAP browser.

Then the iPhone was announced. And it was good. Also I'm pretty sure the six months between the January MWSF announcement and the end of June launch was the longest 6 months ever. I'm reminded of the South Park episode where Cartman tries to freeze himself to wait for a Wii.

A lot of errors in this article but perhaps because it's written from a US point of view where Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens had little to no market share where they were dominant over here and offered advanced functionality during their time while Motorola and RIM were less common. The Nokia N95 had a full featured web browser including flash support, a backup/restore system, its own application store, a 5MP camera, HSDPA, copy/paste, MMS, multi-tasking, fully functional bluetooth including A2DP and was launched the year before the original Iphone and it would take Apple years to match its featureset.

"One of the main features of the iPhone was its full-featured browser. The thing could actually visit normal webpages like those displayed on computers. This was practically unheard of—most handsets at the time largely made use of awkward mobile browsers that could only load awkward mobile websites, which themselves were rare. This was a major move on Apple's part."

Not only could other mobile phones render full web pages before the IPhone, they could also run flash which the Iphone still cannot do so it's the other way round - other handsets could render full web pages and all their content, the Iphone could not.

"And if you had to reformat your device, you could restore it completely from backup from your own computer. Outside of enterprise users (who mostly had BlackBerry devices), regular consumers weren't used to this kind of feature on their phones. (I was pretty happy to be able to successfully transfer a single MP3 to my RAZR over Bluetooth back then. "

No idea where this came from either, I can't think of any phone I had around that timeframe (Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson or HTC) that didn't offer a full back up and restore capability and none of them were enterprise phones and they were mainstream phones at the time, particularly the Symbian handsets. Motorola certainly produced some pretty useless phones including the Razr but that was an issue with Motorola handsets, not the general market.

And if you had to reformat your device, you could restore it completely from backup from your own computer.

Still the biggest pain point with Android for most people.

ESPECIALLY compounded by the fact that every idiot "service" person at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc will tell you the first thing you have to do before they will even consider helping you is do a factory reset of all your data. Even if it's clearly a hardware issue.

I have to say though, looking back at the iPhone 1.0 I'm surprised it was a hit. Maybe the excitement of having a real browser on my phone has worn off completely, but being limited to the programs Apple ships would have been awful.

CUPERTINO, California—April 24, 2012—Apple® today announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 second quarter which ended March 31, 2012. Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones during the quarter, a 88 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

EDIT: also the site seems to use quick time.

You need to scroll down a bit for the juicy content

“About 20 million devices will ship with Windows Mobile on it. We will outsell the iPhone.”Robbie Bach, Microsoft, 8 June 2008

Not only could other mobile phones render full web pages before the IPhone, they could also run flash which the Iphone still cannot do so it's the other way round - other handsets could render full web pages and all their content, the Iphone could not.

Rendering was never the sole issue. It was only time before the CPU's and memory on handheld devices would be able to run a full web browser with all of the trimmings. The issue was that you could render arstechnica.com and you couldn't read it, quickly click a link, or do any of the other things you do in a browser.

I don't know if the handsets you referred to had a good system for zoom in and out and were easy to accurately touch the link you want. If had those things, then you're right. No one cares about rendering, that's implied, people care about interfaces.

The Nokia N95...was launched the year before the original Iphone and it would take Apple years to match its featureset

Quote:

The year Apple launched the iPhone, 2007, was Nokia's best-ever year: it sold 436 million handsets -- nearly 40 per cent of the total purchased worldwide. (Its nearest competitor, Motorola, sold 164 million.) That year, Nokia made £6.7 billion in profit.

Five years later, Nokia's share of the global handset market has almost halved, to just 23.8 per cent. Last year, Samsung sold more smartphones. So did Apple. In 2011 Nokia made a pre-tax loss of £1 billion. The company currently holds cash and liquid assets of just £4.7 billion. At Google, the equivalent figure is around £30 billion; at Apple, it's £28 billion. On this basis, it's not inconceivable that one of the world's best-known technology companies might run out of money.

A lot of errors in this article but perhaps because it's written from a US point of view where Nokia, Ericsson and Siemens had little to no market share where they were dominant over here and offered advanced functionality during their time while Motorola and RIM were less common. The Nokia N95 had a full featured web browser including flash support, a backup/restore system, its own application store, a 5MP camera, HSDPA, copy/paste, MMS, multi-tasking, fully functional bluetooth including A2DP and was launched the year before the original Iphone and it would take Apple years to match its featureset.

What? It was announced in September and available in May. 3 months between announcements and release is at best a quarter before the iPhone.

And if you think matching it's featureset is what allowed the iPhone to beat Nokia, the flip is also true. It took Nokia 3 years to catch up with a full screen capacitive multitouch smartphone.

Quote:

"One of the main features of the iPhone was its full-featured browser. The thing could actually visit normal webpages like those displayed on computers. This was practically unheard of—most handsets at the time largely made use of awkward mobile browsers that could only load awkward mobile websites, which themselves were rare. This was a major move on Apple's part."

Not only could other mobile phones render full web pages before the IPhone, they could also run flash which the Iphone still cannot do so it's the other way round - other handsets could render full web pages and all their content, the Iphone could not.

And we know how RIM, Palm, Motorola, Nokia, and HTC are doing today, don't we? Flash is irrelevant to the argument.

Quote:

"And if you had to reformat your device, you could restore it completely from backup from your own computer. Outside of enterprise users (who mostly had BlackBerry devices), regular consumers weren't used to this kind of feature on their phones. (I was pretty happy to be able to successfully transfer a single MP3 to my RAZR over Bluetooth back then. "

No idea where this came from either, I can't think of any phone I had around that timeframe (Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson or HTC) that didn't offer a full back up and restore capability and none of them were enterprise phones and they were mainstream phones at the time, particularly the Symbian handsets. Motorola certainly produced some pretty useless phones including the Razr but that was an issue with Motorola handsets, not the general market.

The bias in this case is that until the iPhone arrived, most of us had never owned a phone with that feature.

Not only could other mobile phones render full web pages before the IPhone, they could also run flash which the Iphone still cannot do so it's the other way round - other handsets could render full web pages and all their content, the Iphone could not.

it wasn't the full fledge flash, it was a mobile version, Flash Lite.sucked, and is long dead.

Just 5 years?It's difficult to remember a time without an app store and angry birds.

For those of us outside the walled garden jamming on our real games and listening to our play-on-anything mp3s, that time is up to a nanosecond ago.Sorry I ruined your black panther party....

This has been a test from the Emergency Trolling System. If this had been an actual trolling, you would be so butthurt your kool-aid-spit-take would qualify as an enema and you would be over-charged by Cupertino for an official frothing-at-the-mouth upgrade. This has only been a test. We return you now to your regularly scheduled program . . . of indoctrination . . . moo ha HA

I don't think people realize how much these kind of devices lock you into a bigger ecosystem of companies like Apple. When you start buying Apps and download content and work with sync features. You become a slave to a Apple who holds your information. Its really no different for Microsoft or Google's Android which try and do the same thing. The iPhone was simply a great device to get users locked into Apple. This is not really such a bad thing until you want to leave. We talk about standards so much in internet browsers and being able to share files and such over multiple platforms. But for companies their interest is really keeping you in there ecosystem. Smart phones are great devices and have made available lots of power in a small device. But it also tries to marry you into a ecosystem. How long before users want more then just what Apple,Google or Microsoft want you to have? I myself decided to try a Windows phone and realize too that having IE as a browser and having limitations with Apps is the reason Microsoft has not gained much market share. Android has the advantage of multiple devices and yet its confusing upgrade map for those devices is frustrating.Apple is probably attractive only because it was first to the market with a consumer friendly smart phone and because many already established a connection to Apple's ecosystem through iTunes. The smart phone market is all about joining a ecosystem and unfortunately once you make a choice its getting harder to change your mind.

I don't think people realize how much these kind of devices lock you into a bigger ecosystem of companies like Apple. When you start buying Apps and download content and work with sync features. You become a slave to a Apple who holds your information. Its really no different for Microsoft or Google's Android which try and do the same thing.

And Sony, and Amazon, and Nintendo. Nintendo has been doing this for 29 years now. This is not somehow new. People have grown up and have had kids, now, since owning and playing with a NES.

Quote:

The iPhone was simply a great device to get users locked into Apple. This is not really such a bad thing until you want to leave.

Why would you want to leave?

I went from NES to SNES to GBC to PS to PS2 to DS to Wii and soon WiiU.

Quote:

We talk about standards so much in internet browsers and being able to share files and such over multiple platforms. But for companies their interest is really keeping you in there ecosystem. Smart phones are great devices and have made available lots of power in a small device. But it also tries to marry you into a ecosystem. How long before users want more then just what Apple,Google or Microsoft want you to have?

Nintendo has managed for 29 years. I expect Apple and Microsoft, both well over 35 years old now, to be able to keep users happy for, I dunno, another 30 years at the least.

Quote:

I myself decided to try a Windows phone and realize too that having IE as a browser and having limitations with Apps is the reason Microsoft has not gained much market share. Android has the advantage of multiple devices and yet its confusing upgrade map for those devices is frustrating. Apple is probably attractive only because it was first to the market with a consumer friendly smart phone and because many already established a connection to Apple's ecosystem through iTunes. The smart phone market is all about joining a ecosystem and unfortunately once you make a choice its getting harder to change your mind.

Which probably means people will be using these ecosystems for their entire life.

Very true. The iPhone wasn't Apple's first attempt at entering the cellphone market, but it was their first where they designed everything about it from hardware to software. I bought into the iTunes support back then with the Moto SLVR L7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_SLVR_L7#L7

But I do remember being very upset about the 100 song limit, especially since I didn't read about it at first. I kept assuming it was the bit-rate the songs were encoded in so I lowered the bit-rate and still nothing. I think there were a few hex editing hacks for it, but I can't remember. Overall it was a great phone and loved it because of the candy bar shape. But then 2007 came and I went nuts for the iPhone. Sadly, the SLVR never saw the light of day ever again.

Apple announced just before the iPhone's release that developers would be able to create capable Web apps using new Web technologies, so there was no need to create native applications. The developer world was not pleased with this news, but they went with it because...well, what other option was there?

Actually, I think the developer world simply ignored web apps altogether and hacked their iPhones to run things like ScummVM.

Pretty much this. The SDK release was as transparent a response to the advent of jailbreaking and the release of Installer.app as you can get.

Apple doesn't often make changes like that unless it plans to stick with them across the line, so we're willing to place bets that the sixth version of the iPhone won't be called anything but: iPhone

It also brings the iOS devices into naming parity with the rest of Apple's products. They never gave new iPods identifiers (other than generation and price) and the same hold true of their PCs. A Macbook is a Macbook and they only differ in the "options" (and the price).